Devoted Uncertainty
by Yoshi's Lair
Summary: "Sometimes, before my reality was turned upside-down, I used to wonder, 'Why does our life change.' But then I took a step back and finally understood; life doesn't change, only our perception of it." AU A/B


**Devoted Uncertainty**

**Disclaimer: I don't own Twilight or any of S. Myer's characters.**

**Author: Yoshi's Lair**

**Summary: "Sometimes, before my reality was turned upside-down, I used to wonder, 'Why does our life change?' But then I took a step back and finally understood; life **_**doesn't**_** change, only our perception of it." AU A/B**

**A/N: Hi guys. I gotta say that everything to do with magic fascinates me. Whether it's Harry Potter or Charmed doesn't matter. This idea struck me a few months ago but I never really had the inspiration to write it down. But here I am and wha-BAM! The first chapter! **

**Enjoy!**

**Chapter 1:**

_First box. Alright, now, whose is this? Kate's. Right. Next bo- Wait. That_ does _say Kate, right? Yes, good... Or is it kitchen? Goddamnit! Who wrote this? If this is Kate's idea of a practical joke, I swear I will not hesitate to give her a very painful death. Actually, I bet it was that guy giving her the goo-goo eyes the whole time he was meant to be packing up the old house._

"Bella?"

_Now I have to open the box and doing that requires a knife. Where can I find a knife? In the kitchen box. Now, I wonder where that might be... oh, that's right, I don't know because some idiot with the mental capacity of a 3 year old couldn't write legibly to save their life._

"Uh, Bella?"

_Maybe if I use a pencil. Yes! Bella, you genius! Now, all I have to do is jab the pencil through the sticky tape and make a long line of holes. Alright, here I go. One, two, three... Why am I counting them? Eh, six, seven, eight, nine. Yes, it's working! Watch out, Einstein, there's a new genius in the making! Seventeen, eighteen, nineteen-_

"Bella!"

_Snap!_

"Ouch, Goddamnit! What!" Kate recoiled as if she had been slapped as I whirled around and gave her my evil glare.

Yep, this was Kate. "Um, what are you doing?" Kate was slightly shorter than my height, the youngest of the family and had straight blonde hair with dark chocolate coloured highlights. Her shining blue eyes had an amethyst coloured ring circling the iris, just like myself and Angela. Apart from the minor differences, like hair and eye colour, the resemblance between the three of us was astounding. Heart shaped faces, rose red lips... yeah; you could definitely tell we were sisters.

"What does it look like I'm doing?" I snapped, turning my evil glare back to the broken pencil and my now bleeding finger. Oh yes, Bella. A real genius in the making.

_Oh, shut up._

"... I don't know. But if you were looking for a knife, the box is downstairs." She gestured over her shoulder and out the door. I scowled. "Anyway, Angela wants to know if you have any requests for dinner. She's making it now." Kate's lips twitched in restrained amusement. So, it had been her! Why that sneaky little-

I coughed, eyeing the boxes with contempt. "Here's an idea. You can sort out the boxes and I'll go downstairs and help Angela. Okay? Good, have fun." I was out the door and down the stairs before she could so much as open her mouth. My so called emo scowl plastered across my face.

Yeah. Boxes? Unpacking? That can only really translate to one thing: moving houses. Or maybe moving into a house... Either way you get my drift. Okay, so my two sisters and I, we just moved away from Phoenix and into this lovely little town called Forks. Oh, I'm sorry. Did I say lovely? I meant horrid, stupid and dreary town called Forks. I've been here for all of a few hours and already I can tell that there is only one thing on the weather chart here: rain. Kate says it suits my attitude, not that I disagree with her, but still.

So why in hell, out of all the cities in the world, did we choose the town that was a polar opposite of Phoenix? Simple. We didn't. We inherited this mansion like house from our late relatives, and after a few unfortunate incidents at our old home, had no choice but to move here. Just Angela, Kate and myself. No parents. What happened to them? Well, no one actually found out. All we know is that they were chasing down a bunch of sorcerers that had tried to steal a precious family... something – we don't even know what they were trying to steal either – and they disappeared. Talk about secretive.

So here we were; cleaning, unpacking, cooking and playing annoying practical jokes on Bella.

Joy.

Angela gave me a gentle smile as I entered the kitchen. She was the tallest out of the three of us with her stature just under two inches taller than mine. Her soft chocolate coloured hair was tied up in a bun with small wisps of hair falling down the side of her face, curling at the ends and framing her pleasant appearance. Her hazel eyes glimmered slightly, with the traditional family amethyst ring surrounding the centre. She had the - what I could only describe as - sexy, smart businesswoman look about her. Especially when she wore her glasses.

"I thought you were unpacking," Angela stated as I came to stand beside her at the stove. I gave a shrug. "I hope you don't mind pasta tonight. I just want something simple so I can relax." Another shrug. "... Bella, if you don't say something legible in the next five seconds, I will not hesitate in slapping you across the face with this pan."

I perked up. "Uh, yeah. Sounds fabulous." Uh uh. No way was I going to ignore any threat of Angela's. Last time I did that I ended up in the middle of Australia with nothing but a dressing gown on. Yeah, _that_ was fun to explain to the authorities. Angela had a sort of mechanism about her. One minute she'd be all protective lovey-dovey, but the next she'd be threatening to send you to Alaska naked. Thankfully, it was only rarely she made threats like that and only in times where she knew something big was bothering someone. Like right now.

I heard a sigh and glanced up to see Angela watching me with exasperation. _Well..._ c_rap._

"You know, your lack of communication is driving me crazy." Huh? Well, that's a new approach. "At the rate that you're going, I'll be at a mental institution by the end of the year." _You – what?_ I couldn't help the twitch of my lips.

Yep, lovey-dovey Angela was back.

She must have seen my amusement because she gave a playful smile and nudged my shoulder with her own before going back to her cooking. Geez, this girl was an enigma.

"So, where's Kate?"

I pushed off the ground and sat on top of the kitchen bench, idly tracing patterns on the black granite surface. "Erm, upstairs. Unpacking boxes." Angela raised a questioning eyebrow at me. "What?"

"Isn't that what _you_ are supposed to be doing?"

I gave a shrug, eyeing her warily to make sure no flying pan came my way. But there was no need as her answer came in the form of a crash and loud swearing from the landing above.

I managed to conceal a grin. "Not anymore."

The rest of the evening went by relatively quickly after that. We ate dinner, unpacked some more, then went to bed. Well, at least Angela and Kate went to bed. I stayed up, sitting at my window frame and watched the lush green forest dance and sway outside, the soft patter of rain the only sound audible.

It was such a dramatic change from the landscape of Phoenix. Instead of a bright and luminous, sunny scenery, the surrounding was filled with a dark cloudy sky, luscious green plant life and rain. _Lots_ of rain. I wasn't sure whether I would grow to like it or not. To me it was depressing and the dreariness added to my already not-so-cheery mind. I didn't even want to move in the first place, no matter if the house I now lived in was massive and no doubt worth a fortune. I loved my old home and it held so many fond memories of our parents and young life together.

It was an accident; I didn't actually mean to hurt anyone, but the girl just wouldn't stop fleeing - always trailing us around then taking off – until it finally reached a point where not even Kate or Angela could help me forget about the girl or ignore her. We were having a day out in town just enjoying the sun when it happened. Angela had been helping Kate pick out a dress for the upcoming school dance, when another Aura had hit us. A witches Aura. We followed it and ended up chasing the witch that had been tailing us for months. I'd hastily recited a spell that I had created in a hope of freezing the girl where she was, but it backfired and hit a completely different target. The whole Shopping Centre had been blown apart from the inside, destroying everything with no mercy. No one discovered the cause of the explosion and there were no deaths, but the nationwide exposure had been too much for my sisters and I. Exposure not to being discovered as witches, but exposure to being discovered _by sorcerers_.

And so we decided to leave.

I rested my forehead against the cool glass of the window, relishing in the relief it brought to my aching head. So far there had not been any sign of the witch that had been trailing us, but that didn't mean it would last long. After all, it had only been a day since we arrived here and if this witch was anything like we thought her to be, she would find us within a month. Two at max. Time was ticking.

Soft footfalls could be heard outside my room and slowly the door swung open to reveal Kate. She shut the door quietly behind her and crept forward, in her hand was a small sphere of electricity, flickering and humming softly whilst casting a sparkling glow in the room. She stepped to the side of the bed and sat on it, extinguishing the ball of light.

"I thought you'd be wake." A Pause.

"I thought you'd be asleep."

In the soft light I saw her lips form a smile. "Touché."

My own lips formed a smile and I left the window sill to sit beside my younger sister on the bed. "What are you doing here?" I asked. "Shouldn't you be in bed?"

Kate gave a small shrug, her shoulder brushing up against mine. She hesitated slightly before answering. "I can't sleep." I frowned, opening my mouth to respond, but she cut in before I could talk. "I don't think it's the same reason as why you can't sleep, but I just came here because I knew you'd be up and I didn't want to disturb Angie."

I nodded and resumed gazing out the window from my perch on the bed. It was no secret that I wasn't good with conversing, but this was my little sister and I wasn't about to turn her away when she needed me. "Are you worried?"

"Yes and no." She answered, twining her fingers together anxiously, a stark contrast from her usual cheery self. "I'm not worried about not being able to sleep, but... I am about... being discovered." She fidgeted nervously and I felt a pang of guilt hit me. It was law: 'No witch or Wizard is to reveal themselves in any way to the non-magical community without explicit permission from Wicca Authorities.'

I had no response for her; I was too ashamed and guilty. I don't think she actually meant to make me feel guilty, after all, she and Angela have had no hesitations in telling me that the cause of our relocation wasn't my fault, but hearing her worry made me feel accountable for it anyway.

And that wasn't going to change anytime soon.

**XXxx-xxXX**

The remainder of the weekend had been spent unpacking, putting things away, cleaning, organising... you know the drill. The only good thing I can say was that it distracted me from my brooding and doom-the-world nature I had. But with the arrival Sunday night it was back to normal for me. Getting not even a few hours sleep, having an increasingly annoying sense of paranoia and, again, a doom-the-world nature. The strange thing was that the paranoia I felt wasn't really... _mine. _I mean, it was mine, but it was more like a conscience trying to tell me something. Urging me somewhere. Something that irritated me to no end.

I had originally planned on exploring the house to my heart's content, seeing as I'd never really stepped foot in a house that was big enough to call a manor, let alone lived in one, but with all the jobs around the house that needed to be done, that train of thought had been swept away. Kate, my darling sister, had eventually managed to sort out all the box's that _she_ had purposely written illegible names on into the right rooms and, much to my amusement, grumbling and casting scowls in my direction the whole time. What can I say? People don't understand my sense humour the way I do.

Angela had spent most of the time cleaning and putting things away and, along with my help, was now lying on the length of couch in front of the fireplace, Kate resting her back on Angela's legs with her feet falling over the back of the couch while I sat on the ground, my back against the front of it. Kayla, our fluffy white Husky, had her head resting on my lap, eyes closed while I ran my fingers to and fro through her thick fur.

I must admit that I did enjoy having times like this together with my sisters. It felt nice to just relax and do absolutely nothing. That was probably because I was a major klutz and walking on a flat, solid surface for me was like trying to walk on water. But besides that, it was nice not having to worry about evil sorcerers finding us and killing us for an heirloom that we knew nothing about. Or blowing the house apart from the inside because someone decided to annoy another certain someone by driving them insane with practical jokes. Yeah, I think you know who I'm talking about.

I sighed, using my free hand to rub my forehead. School was starting tomorrow and that was just another thing to add to my list of worries. I could tell that both Angela and Kate knew something was wrong, but they were keeping it to themselves. After all, trying to get me to vent my feelings was like trying to get a brick wall to talk. Possibly even harder. And even if they did manage to get me to talk, the only responses they would get would be filled to the brim with sarcasm.

_Yummy. Sarcasm. _

See?

"I don't know about you guys," Kate started, stretching her arms and yawning. "But, I'm really starting to like this house. It's so big! Like our own version of the White House, only smaller, not white, a little more modern and not famous."

I snorted. "You just completely contradicted what you just said."

Silence fell again, but it was broken after a few seconds when Kate reached over and zapped me on the shoulder.

I jumped. "Ow! Hey! What was that for?"

"For pointing out my flaws. It's rude."

I huffed, rubbing my tingling arm. "You're one to talk."

There was movement on the couch as Angela shifted. "I'd tell you guys off if I wasn't so comfortable right now. And besides, Kate, haven't I already said not to use your Ability on anyone, _including_ your sister?"

Kate gave a half-hearted shrug. Or something as close to resembling a shrug someone could do while sitting upside-down. "Just 'cuz you guys don't have your Ability yet."

As descendants from the 'great Denali sisters', Irina and Carmen, our whole family line has been gifted with the use of magic. Spell casting, enchantments, alchemy... all of it. The 'Ability' that Angela and Kate were talking about – the official supernatural name for it was actually an 'Aptitude' - meant being able to have complete control over one certain element or source. For example, Kate's Aptitude was lightning and being able to create and manipulate lightning bolts and electricity. However, just because Aptitude's exist didn't mean they were common; having them was actually quite rare. But still, it _was_ rather cool when Kate decided to have mini play battles using her Ability.

"I _can _still send you to Africa for the day with no way of getting back, you know. Remember?" _Go, Angie! You show her! _I cheered in my mind, but then she stretched and rested her arm on my head. I scowled. "You know, you make a good armrest, Bells."

"Do you mind?" I asked, trying to move out of the way but only managing to wake Kayla instead, who opened her eyes and tilted her head at me.

_What're you lookin' at, hey?_

"Not really." There was a long but somehow not uncomfortable pause. Angela sprawled out along the couch, Kate lying upside-down and myself acting as an armrest.

_Lovely._

"Oh, I forgot to tell you. I changed our last name to Swan."

I turned, trying to see past the arm above me and to Angela. "We've taken up dad's name? Why didn't we keep Denali?" Kate was also listening and watching curiously now.

"A precaution. Can't be too careful; Denali is a very well known name in the magical world, you know that. If word got out that a Denali – or in our case, Denali_'s -_ moved from Phoenix to Forks so close to the time that _that_ incident occurred, basically, we're screwed."

Kate pursed her lips. "So you changed it. Officially?"

Angela shook her head. "No, not officially, but from here-on-in, we are known as the 'Swan Sisters'."

"We're the only descendants left of the line." I mused. "Fingers would immediately be pointed at us. I guess it makes sense, what you did."

I would rather change our name temporarily, than not change it and be found out. Hmm... yes, I'd take life over a painful death any day, thank you. And not only would it just be the death of us, it would mean the death of the whole family line, from start to finish. No retries. The end.

"Do you ever think we'll find out what's wanted from us? I mean, someone is after something... we don't know what it is... Isn't that all going to catch up to us sooner or later? We'll get caught up in things we don't need to be caught up in. And then there's the matter of that girl who keeps following us everywhere."

This time we were all quiet as we pondered Kate's question and even Kayla looked at me questioningly.

She had a point. There were so many mysteries sounding this family and, sooner or later, we were bound to get tangled in its secrets. Without the knowledge we needed, we might as well be living in an underground hole with no window as our life. People wanted our secrets. All of them. But we knew _none_ of them. Absolute zilch. One way or another, this unawareness was going to come back and bite us in the butt and there would be nothing we could do to stop it.

"Maybe if we did some research. There's got to be _some _information on our history. And people know so much about us too. We can always ask them for some background info."

I shook my head. "It might have been a good idea a few years ago, but now if we go asking around, people will get suspicious. We need privacy and, most of all, to stay _out_ of the limelight. We don't need anyone questioning us. It's too risky."

Angela sighed, running a hand through her hair and sitting up. Finally removing her arm from my head and causing Kate to topple off the couch from lack of support. "Look, guys. The only thing we can do is try to stay out of the Wicca eye. Research what we can through books we've got and maybe we'll find something useful around the house here. Sure, we can show off cool cars and a massive house, but nothing Wicca related. No enchantments lying around, spell casting and no use of our Ability in public _at all_." She cast a meaningful glance at Kate, who plopped herself back on the couch and glared at Angela. "Until we know what's going on, we need to be extra cautious. For all we know, another witch or wizard could be living right around the corner from this house, watching us. We need to know _who _wants this thing we've got and _why_."

Internally, I agreed with Angela, and I know Kate did too. Until we knew who wanted this, so called, 'heirloom' we've got, we had to be extremely careful.

"And this girl that's been following us? The Witch? What if she shows up again?" Kate was voicing the questions we all needed answers to.

I rubbed my forehead with a grimace; I could not believe I was about to say this. "If she shows up again, we need to make sure we ignore her. Give her the impression that we haven't noticed her and we don't know who and what she is. Be ignorant of her existence."

Kate looked at me in surprise, and then a smile crept to her lips. "Go, Bellsie!"

I groaned. "Please don't call me that."

And just like that, we had lifted the wearisome mood and replaced it with a calm, carefree one. We had said what needed to be said and we'd moved on. Now, we could focus on the trivial things. Like school. And practical jokes.

Angela let out a yawn and a massive stretch while I grumbled. "What time do we need to be at school for tomorrow? I can't remember."

Kate grinned, doing a very good impersonation of the Cheshire Cat. "Eight thirty on the dot. But _we_ are getting there early tomorrow, aren't we, Angie? Need to make a good impression on the new school. Can't have them thinking badly of us."

"Yeah, yeah. You don't care about the damn school. You just want all the attention, don't you?"

Mocking hurt and placing a hand against her heart, the youngest of the 'Swan's' gasped loudly. "I'm hurt, Bella. And I'm shocked that you think so poorly of me." She feigned a sniffle and whipped her nose dramatically. "Are you gonna let her insult me like that, Ang?"

I grimaced and Angela sent me a sympathetic smile. "You've got to admit, Bella. Starting a new school is going to be fun. You can't always hideaway in your little hole forever, you know. There is a whole world out there, waiting at your doorstep. Sometimes you need to spend time in it."

I gaped. "You're siding with _her. _Who _are _you?"

She just smiled and stood, leaving the warm and cosy room for her bed upstairs. "I do expect you to be up and ready to leave on time in the morning tomorrow. Keep that in mind." Yeah, like I'd be sleeping anyway.

I groaned in annoyance and fell flat on my back, watching as Kayla tilted her head curiously at me and Kate grinned in victory. I swear, if that girl acted any younger, she wouldn't even be born yet. Of course, that's not including her actual seventeen year old self, but still, you get my drift.

"See, Bella? You're a hermit."

_Uh, no. I really don't think I am. Because that would mean that both you and Ang are hermit's too and I don't think you are so... no, I don't believe I am._

Brushing Kayla off me as I stood, I said, "Come on, Kayla. Why don't you spend some time with Bella the hermit, yeah? I'm certainshe'll absolutely _love_ your company." _Ah, and there we have it, folks._

The wonderfully scripted language of sarcasm.

**A/N: If there are any queries or questions, PM me or just ask in a review. I'll either get back to you through a reply or post in the next chapter. ****Note that this is **_**not**_** my first story on Fanfiction. Just under a different name.**

**Also, don't expect me to update anytime soon. I will only update when I have the time. And I do realise that there is another story by Paige Turner which has the 'Charmed, three sisters with magic theme' that mine does, however, I started writing this BEFORE I read her story, so if you have an issue, a civil conversation would be nice. The story lines will be completely different.**

**... But not the Bellice. Gotta love the Bellice.**


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